Welcome to the website of the Digital Media Law Project. The DMLP was a project of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society from 2007 to 2014. Due to popular demand the Berkman Klein Center is keeping the website online, but please note that the website and its contents are no longer being updated. Please check any information you find here for accuracy and completeness.

We’ve all seen it on Twitter bios, usually bios belonging to members of the media.

These kinds of disclaimers, disassociating the tweets from the people
who retweet them, are common. The Twitter bio belonging to Brian
Stelter of the New York Times (@brianstelter) notes, “RT & links aren’t endorsements.”

While doing some research on recent media law suits here at the CMLP, I came across a particularly interesting case involving a dispute over the ownership of a Twitter account: PhoneDog, LLC v. Kravitz.

Last Thursday, Twitter announced that it would start censoring tweets by denying access to specific tweets in countries where those tweets would be illegal. Naturally, this has caused a lot of concern online.

The Arkansas Supreme Court has reversed
a murder conviction – and death sentence – in a case where one juror
tweeted during trial, while another fell asleep. Both these problems,
the court said, constituted juror misconduct requiring reversal and a
new trial. Erickson Dimas-Martinez v. State, 2011 Ark. 515 (Dec. 8, 2011).

When web developer Andy Boyle overheard a couple discussing their marital woes in a Burger King in Boston on Nov. 7, he immediately recognized the entertainment value and began tweeting a play-by-play.

Imagine you live in a country where criminal attacks on civilians are alarmingly familiar, and reliable reporting from the local media is regrettably unfamiliar. You hear about an attack on your local school, so you take to the Internet to spread the word on Facebook and Twitter to warn people before it's too late. Mercifully, the report you heard was mistaken, and everything's okay...

We are looking for contributing authors with expertise in media law, intellectual property, First Amendment, and other related fields to join us as guest bloggers. If you are interested, please contact us for more details.

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